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arXiv:2511.23353

Probing the Fermi Sea Topology in a Quantum Gas

Cyprien Daix, Pok Man Tam, Maxime Dixmerias, Joris Verstraten, Tim de Jongh, Bruno Peaudecerf, Charles L. Kane, Tarik Yefsah

cond-mat.quant-gascond-mat.mes-hallcond-mat.str-elquant-phSubmitted Nov 28, 2025• Announced Dec 1, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Pauli's exclusion principle forces fermions to occupy distinct quantum states, creating a filled region of momentum space at low temperature, the Fermi sea, whose topology governs the system's response to perturbations and the nature of its correlation functions. Recent theory predicts that for non-interacting fermions, the Euler characteristic of a $D$-dimensional Fermi sea -- the topological invariant that describes its shape -- is encoded in its ($D$+1)-point density correlations. Here we experimentally demonstrate this connection in a two-dimensional degenerate gas of neutral $^{6}$Li atoms using single-atom-resolved imaging. By measuring three- and four-point connected density correlations in real space, we directly extract topological invariants of the underlying Fermi sea, including the Euler characteristic. Our results are in remarkable agreement with ideal-gas predictions, despite the presence of sizeable interactions, and establish a new pathway for probing many-body topology through correlation measurements.

Comments
16 pages, 11 figures

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Pauli's exclusion principle forces fermions to occupy distinct quantum states, creating a filled region of momentum space at low temperature, the Fermi sea, whose topology governs the system's response to perturbations and the nature of its correlation functions. Recent theory predicts that for non-interacting fermions, the Euler characteristic of a DDD-dimensional Fermi sea -- the topological invariant that describes its shape -- is encoded in its (DDD+1)-point density correlations. Here we experimentally demonstrate this connection in a two-dimensional degenerate gas of neutral 6^{6}6Li atoms using single-atom-resolved imaging. By measuring three- and four-point connected density correlations in real space, we directly extract topological invariants of the underlying Fermi sea, including the Euler characteristic. Our results are in remarkable agreement with ideal-gas predictions, despite the presence of sizeable interactions, and establish a new pathway for probing many-body topology through correlation measurements.
A Fermi gas of noninteracting electrons, or ultracold fermionic atoms, has a quantum ground state defined by a region of occupancy in momentum space known as the Fermi sea. The Euler characteristic ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{F}$ of the Fermi sea serves to topologically classify these gapless fermionic states. The topology of a DDD-dimensional Fermi sea is physically encoded in the D+1D+1D+1 point equal time density correlation function. In this work, we first present a simple proof of this fact by showing that the evaluation of the correlation function can be formulated in terms of a triangulation of the Fermi sea with a collection of points, links, and triangles and their higher dimensional analogs. We then make use of the topological D+1D+1D+1 point density correlation to reveal universal structures of the more general MMM point density correlation functions in a DDD-dimensional Fermi gas. Two experimental methods are proposed for observing these correlations in D=2D=2D=2. In cold atomic gases imaged by quantum gas microscopy, our analysis supports the feasibility of measuring the third-order density correlation, from which ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{F}$ can be reliably extracted in systems with as few as around 100 atoms. For solid-state electron gases, we propose measuring correlations in the speckle pattern of intensity fluctuations in nonlinear x-ray scattering experiments.
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